2 Samuel 16:20-17:3 – Ahithophel’s Advice
The first piece of advice Ahithophel gives is at the end of chapter 16. Absalom asks him what he should do and Ahithophel replies: ‘Go in to your father’s concubines’. These are the secondary wives that David had left behind. Chapter 15 tells us that he’d left 10 of them.
When a new king came to power one of the symbolic things they did was take the harem, the wives, of the previous king. Normally, it may just have been a symbolic thing. But for Absalom to actually go in and have relations with these women – and in a way that everyone knew what was happening – was a way of burning his bridges with David. There’s no going back now. No prospect of reconciliation.
Yet as readers, the fact that Absalom follows Ahithophel’s shocking counsel is actually quietly reassuring. Why? Because what had God told David through Nathan the prophet back in chapter 12? He’d told him: ‘I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun’. Even in the midst of all this sin, God is still at work. Even in the midst of our sinful world, God is still at work. All people can do with all their scheming against God is fulfil his plans.
Don’t we see that above all at the cross? Those who put Jesus there are still guilty. But all their sin manages to do is fulfil God’s word and advance his plan. In fact, in the second half of verse 3 Ahitophel urges that one man be killed in order to bring peace to the people, or to bring about the return of the people. ‘You seek the life of only one man, and all the people will be at peace’. Kill one man and all the people will be at peace. That’s what happens on the cross. Just as the Jewish high priest Caiaphas counselled better than he knew when he said about Jesus: ‘it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish’. Caiaphas meant it was better than one man should die if it got the Romans off their backs. But Jesus death actually brought about not simply physical deliverance but spiritual salvation.
Question
- How do we see evil fulfilling God’s plan at the cross?
Prayer Points
- Give thanks that God is sovereign over every situation.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.